Beyond
by GunnerPuppy
Summary: Faith is something that tends to waver inside the walls. Faith isn't something that came easy to Jean.


_**AN: I'm just a big best friend love dork. I just thought about canonverse and then this happened and I posted it to AO3, but I'm not technically dead here. Not the first JeanMarco thing I've written but it is the first thing I've finished. Snk has a bigger fan base on tumblr and AO3 but there's hardly anything in comparison here. So here's my bittersweet mess of a one-shot that may or may not turn into a multi-shot once I get a break from school's major ass-kicking.**_

**Beyond **

Faith can be something that's hard to come by inside these walls. It's no great wonder why. While the walls themselves have come to be held with a certain reverence, it's a religion that feels hollow to me. I've seen walls crumble and too many gates fail.

There are older sources of faith, and of terror. Old texts weave intricate epics of heroes and gods. That make claims of times of kings who gain Mandate of Heaven and bring about abundant wealth. Something outrageous to someone born under tyranny and poverty. Eras of war between sacred and vile crash, never ending. Perhaps our lives in this corral are future installments. Sometimes, it's harder to imagine the pure things than it is the demons who feed off of the shadows cast by their light.

I'd never been particularly hopeful. I thought that this world was just generally shitty and that we'd all just have to deal until we keeled over or got chomped by titans. In old texts, miracles generate faith. It would take no less in my case.

In my trainee days I found myself in the company of very different people. There were those who were angry, those who were war torn and broken, and those who were oblivious. But, some people weren't any of those. Mikasa was stoic and deadly. Armin was cunning and, upmost terrifyingly, analytic. Historia was masked. Ymir was boisterous yet reserved. And Marco. Marco was brilliant.

His big, soft, brown eyes radiated warmth. He was excellent with his deft hands and clear voice. He knew how to comfort and how to be a friend, and how to be a soldier. He wasn't always the best leader or strategist, but he pulled himself together and made the best of what he had. Honestly, he was best when most men were the worst. Although, he usually fainted soon after.

It used to be a struggle to understand faith, but he opened my eyes. It's not like it was some instantaneous realization. It started with hope. Marco had a way of taking a shitty situation and making it generally less shitty. The strength in the determination of his eyes matched the strength of his broad shoulders. He was always resolved to act for what he called "the Greater Good." I hadn't understood, but I saw purer intention than I saw in most. Only Marco would go above and beyond to get along with a caustic pain in the ass like myself, and that's just what happened. He picked his way through my defenses and into my daily routine.

I don't know at what point it was that I became dependent, but I sure did. It was just little things at first. He'd snag an extra mug in the morning, when I was so zombified by sleep, and present me with a steaming cup of coffee just the way I liked to take it. He'd pause to wait up for me after a lecture. He'd slide my shoes under my bunk when I kicked them off carelessly after getting my ass whopped by training so Jäger wouldn't face plant and tear me up over it. Those little things easily slipped my notice.

Less elusive was the way I began to feel empty when we were split into different squads during training or missions. Or the panic I'd felt the one time he'd left the group and passed out in the rain. I can still remember the ache I felt when I'd realized I had caused the situation. Perhaps, it was the time I had fallen ill that really got to me, the way he'd checked up on me at every break he could manage without being told off.

Nonetheless, I fell hard and fast. Marco's presence and attention made or broke my day. He quelled my rage if one of the other cadets or a sour situation fanned it. His warm hand on my shoulder comforted me when I felt like I was about to lose my shit. For the first time that I could ever recall, I trusted a human being. I actually, really trusted.

Thus, I'd think it'd be understandable that after the Battle of Trost, my world came to a screeching halt and shattered into jagged fragments.

He was gone. That's all I'd been able to think, and I really couldn't believe it. Even when I joined my surviving, rugged comrades by the pyre, it wasn't possible. I hadn't even been there to witness it. Marco couldn't just be gone. I swore I could still see those soft eyes, that bright smile. I swore I could hear that musical baritone, even as I watched his corpse burn to ash. As I stared hopelessly after the dying flames and pocketed a bone shard I could only hope was his, I was nothing.

I think the worst of it hit me that night. I woke up from a night terror, nothing too unusual. I'd been having night terrors since months before graduation. Numbness turned to heavy realization when I sought his comfort in the bunk above mine. It was empty, the sheets still neatly made. I ascended the latter and sobbed brokenly into the pillow that still smelled of him. I'd like to say I sobbed myself to sleep, but I got none that night.

After that it only got darker. I felt more hopeless than I ever have. I'd swear I heard a chuckle or hum of approval on the wind, but turn to only find empty air void of life. I'd look for him in the canteen or in the barracks. I made my choice for him and donned the wings of freedom.

Joining the Survey Corps was no easy decision, and Captain Levi seemed hellbent on making the actual service just as arduous. His training made the 3DMG bruises the scraped knee to a broken bone. Blisters, bruises, and aching muscles became familiar to me. Pain was already my acquaintance. I can't say that I was a complete mess, that'd be inaccurate.

I was simply numb.

I was too numb to notice the little things though. The signs. I still left my socks lay and carelessly kicked my shoes off. Jäger never tripped. I still woke up in cold sweats from horrific nightmares, yet I managed to sleep again. I'd thought that I'd just been blacking out from exhaustion, but there was cause for doubt. I could swear that I'd felt a soft touch soothing me once or twice. At the time, I'd attributed it to my lack of REM sleep.

Like anything before, my stubborn and dense skull refused the possibility that my heart longed for.

Not too long after enlisting in the Survey Corps, the female titan emerged. She was like nothing I'd faced. The cool calculating eyes were disturbing and the flares that colored the sky as she picked apart the formation carried a heavy weight in my chest.

I wondered how many people would die out here away from the families they knew. Alone.

I'd taken up a habit of pressing my lips to the hilt of my saber before riding into battle. It was how I would begin each mission, each battle. With a tribute to him. It was as if I wanted to say "Hey! Look at me? Look at what my sorry ass has become." I wanted him to be proud. His old scratched gear had his hand worn into its grip, and somehow it was more comfortable than my own.

There were times in battle that I'd feel as if I'd finally lost it. That it would end. I would slip. Somehow, I always began to kindle in my soul, I still feared that it was false.

It wasn't until one night when we were all gathered around a pathetic camp fire consuming our shitty rations that that doubt began to fade. I'd had a long day of galloping across endless planes on horseback and was settling in with my comrades, safe inside the wall for the first time in what I thought was ages. Everyone else had either passed out or dozed off in their sleeping bags. I found myself watching the fire burn down to embers and couldn't help but see the pyre. Numb. I don't remember when it was that I dozed off, but when I was nudged awake the next morning by Historia I was reluctant to budge from the blanket cocoon I was warm and shielded in. A cocoon that I hadn't created for myself. It was stupid, but it was odd. It was also very Marcoesque.

A few nights later, back in the barracks, we found ourselves in a quiet lull. It was much appreciated and, being the tired soldiers we were, we took it as a means of collapsing and snoring away our fatigue. I felt unmistakable soft lips ghost across my forehead before my consciousness slipped away from me. I found it impossible to doubt anymore.

_**I'm still alive. Barely with school right now. And I still write. Sometimes. For other fandoms. And I still want to finish my old fics, and by "finish" I really mean completely reface Carpe Diem and possibly the Fiore Mages. My poor directionless Edolas AU and my painfully weak high school AU still call to me and receive an occasional touch up. UGGGGG school though.**_


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